The Troma 12 Step Program

Okay, it’s time to admit it. You’re addicted to dung. You know what we mean. Garbage. Junk. Refuse. The kind of generic popcorn movie fluff that Hollywood passes off as art each and every week of the year. As a matter of fact, you’ve been mainlining the mainstream for so long that you know longer have the arterial constitution to tell good from god awful. At this point in your problem, you’re more or less gone, given over to lackluster gross out comedies, anemic thrillers, overripe melodramas, and the same old “I hate my life” indie angst fests. Even the typical tame horror romp finds a way to get your gooseflesh perky. In fact, if you’re not experiencing the non-acting abominations that are Robin Williams and Jennifer Aniston, you’re not sure it’s actually a movie you’re mooning over.

Well guess what – it’s time for an intervention – TROMA style. As the leading purveyor of pure art in the entirety of modern motion picture making, founder Lloyd Kaufman and his merry band of product purchases have come up with a dozen definitive films that, when experienced, will work better than a trip to rehab and/or a featured video on TMZ combined. It will get you out of the shame cycle, correct your bass ackward crap aesthetic issues, and release you from the grip of baby blood drinking studio suits. Here’s a warning, however. It will not be easy. The sights you see and the stories you experience will not be some cookie cutter committee claptrap marginalized for maximum demographic delight. No, these are real films by real filmmakers, and their clarity may put you off – at first.

But if you stick with it, give it time, and follow these rigorous rules of celluloid self-examination, you might just find that your compulsion is curable. Heck, you may even discover that you prefer a good dose of unnecessary sadistic bloodletting or undead neck nibbling to the latest Saw installment. Just remember – these are not official Troma helmed productions we’re talking about. The power of those bad boys is too great for the fragile first timer. Instead, these are the company-approved offerings that best illustrate their big picture dynamic. Once you’ve survived these samplings, a date with everyone’s favorite mutant mop boy is just a relapse away. Let’s begin with:

Step 1: Give Up the Self-Destructive Streak (Suicide, 2001)

Armchair psychiatrists would argue that the main reason people gravitate toward Tinsel Town’s trash is that they have some manner of indirect death wish. Well, if you want to see individuals with a much greater desire to end it all than you will ever have, try this intriguing German mock doc. Using a handheld POV to support a premise where people sign up on the internet to have their title acts filmed, we get one of those “is it or isn’t it real” presentations that will have audiences arguing for days afterward. Even better, it will begin the cleansing and curative process.

Step 2: Acknowledge the Devil’s Hold on Cinema (Screamplay (1985)

While blame is never healthy (we are trying to take responsibility for ourselves, remember), one must never forget the role the mangoat plays in keeping us hooked on hackwork. An excellent example of this paradigm arrives in the form of this writing as reprobate satire. When a screen scribe’s imagination becomes so vivid that the crimes he imagines become real, no one in the business called show is safe. And the best part is – this is one wickedly witty work, proof that not all scripts are culled by committee scat. Outsider auteur George Kuchar is even part of the cast.

Step 3: Give Up Drugs (Meat Weed Madness 2006)

At this point, you’re well beyond a simple negative pronouncement. In fact, it’s painfully obvious that just saying “No” would do very little except exercise your vocal chords. What you require, instead, is a healthy dose of demented tough love – and this surreal Southern Gothic is just the demented dime bag you require. Here, a group of gals stumble upon the Bullpocky Plantation and its title herb – a plant cultivated from human flesh! One toke and you’re not only over the line, you’re high on your own supply and ready to bogart the soul out of someone.

Step 4: Take a Vow of Chastity (Killer Condom 1996)

It’s a fact – sex will only screw you up. Unfocused fornication and purposeless petting will merely lead to heartache, body issues, and suffering. Don’t believe it – then check out this Teutonic treat about a prophylactic that preys on people. When Detectice Mackaroni discovers a rash of missing “member” cases, he stakes out a seedy motel in hopes of finding some answers. Turns out, there’s a randy rubber on the loose, looking to stop illicit physical contact once and for all. While Christians can call for abstinence and liberals long for education, this is one solution that’s also ribbed (for her pleasure).

Step 5: Avoid a Life of Crime (Wiseguys vs. Zombies 2003)

Everyone thinks that gangsters are so cool, and with Hollywood glamorizing their murder for hire mythos, it’s hard to tell the felonies for the Sicilian family trees. But one screening of this Cosa Nostra corpse grinding will cure you of even the most lingering Sopranos sympathies. Two hit men, delivering bodies and bottles to a connection in Miami, wind up face to face with bloodthirsty remnants of the undead. And these are the kind of flesh fiends who can’t be bribed with irrefutable offers. It’s enough to make those geared toward goombah’s choke on their cabbagool!

Step 6: Try Alternative Foods (Meat for Satan’s Icebox 2004)

Speaking of inedible vittles, one of the best ways toward self-help and aesthetic purification is the toxin purging properties of a new diet. Sadly, almost every life altering culinary amalgamation has been forwarded by a baneful buck hungry business, from organic to raw. Leave it to this ignominious indie effort to offer stripper sirloin as the latest answer to what’s for dinner. That’s right – Soylent Green is not the only human-based hunger hinderer anymore. With Satan himself working as a homespun homosapien pitchfork man, there’ll be plenty to go around.

Step 7: Recognize the Inherent Evil in Youth (The Children 1981)

Of course, everyone knows that kids are craven. They’re about the wickedest little buggers this side of Nazis and roughed collies. So keeping away from the wee ones is always warranted. But what if you find yourself slipping, influenced unfavorably by a cherubic face or a tongue-heavy “thpeech patuwn”? Just remember – hiding behind that cute façade could be a radioactive monster ready to hug you into an early grave. At least, that’s what this beloved low budget fright flick tells us. Leave it to cinema to make progeny even more precarious.

They say that movie is illusion, but that’s only partly true. Theater is much more existence mocking since it uses the inherent connectivity of a live event to foster a fictional, usually melodramatic methodology. So in order to keep such Great White Way wants to a bare minimum, rehabbers might want to check out this gore soaked creepshow classic. Centering on Sardu and his supposedly “fake” torture show, there’s enough amateur brain surgery, little person perversion, and garroted gals to swear you off the smell of greasepaint and the roar of the crowd forever.

Step 9: Reconcile that Life is Chaotic and Episodic (Dumpster Baby 2000)

Here’s another truism: existence if futile - or if not fruitless, at the very least fractured. Seemingly random events can add up to one Helluva karmic cock-up and you may never ever recognize said fact. Indeed, what you require is a celluloid guide, a movie that makes the seemingly senselessness line up and have meaning. This tale of a rejected infant and the Prague like predicament of the effect it has on everyone around it will surely solidify your grip on human happenstance. After all, if a dada-esque excursion into the obscure can come out legible, your world can too.

Step 10: Never Forget that War is Hell (Combat Shock 1986)

Combat produces a two-fold trial for the average vet. First, there is the atrocity of battle, the spilling of blood, the loss of individual life. Then there is the aftermath – the broken government promises, the unattended internal scaring, the lack of sympathy and support from the ungrateful society around you. It’s a situation all too familiar to Frankie Dunlan in this intense urban nightmare. Destitute and desperate, with a family to feed and no prospects in sight, our hero simply sinks into a cesspool of his own bad luck. Proof that all pointless police actions are deadly in many different ways.

Step 11: Understand that there are People Much Worse Off than You (Luther the Geek 1990)

Remember when you mother convinced you to eat your greens by telling you that people in far off, invisible lands had it so much tougher than you. Well, your guardian could have looked closer to home for more powerful illustrations of elder acquiescence. As a young boy, our title character saw a group of men taunting a real life sideshow oddity. Years later, this newly crowned psycho killer somehow manages to gain parole. He decides to do a little freak showcasing on anyone who’s available. So the next time you sing your sob story, this caustic cautionary tale will hopefully dull the despair.

Of course, after all these substantive steps, after reflection and tons of therapeutic screams, you may still feel a little flummoxed. Have no fear – ET is here. That’s right, if you can’t gain control of your habit, if you still hanker for a hunk of blockbuster cheese, if you can’t help but wonder what Michael Bay is up to next, then explain away your malady as the byproduct of an abduction. And what better example of outer space madness can one choose than this Warren F. Disbrow classic. Revolving around a bloodthirsty crater critter who piggybacks onto a returning US astronaut, it’s the perfect personal pass. It’s also the only way Troma can treat the torment.